This future we live in is a flimsy, weak thing. It is based on bad signal; incorrect assumptions, mistaken beliefs, and the refusal to face facts. Adam Smith - arguably the most misquoted man in history - tried to explain this, with the "invisible hand of the market place". Likewise, Kipling wrote about it in The Gods of the Copybook Headings.

Basically, the universe doesn't care what you believe...And if you base your actions on incorrect beliefs, the universe will correct you. This correction can have results that range from "embarrassing" to "fatal", depending on which part of reality you have chosen to ignore. Examples abound: Economically, these examples include the "corrections" of 1929 and 2008. Likewise, a series of bad beliefs from 1880 to 1914 led to a chain of bloody wars that haunt us til this very day.

Lysander Spooner, in 1867, wrote an essay called No Treason, in which he argued that Lincoln had no constitutional right to keep the South in the union, and that while preserving the union, he had destroyed the republic. By both strengthening the federal government, and retaining the South and its aristocratic notions, Lincoln had set the stage for an oligarchy. He was, of course, correct. The correction that reality imposed was almost immediate, and remains almost completely unrecognized in America today. In fact, most Americans assume that they are more free than they were in 1859, which is patently not the case.

Today, our "government" and their masters at Goldman Sachs have turned bad signal into an art form. They have led the entire world to believe things that simply aren't so. The correction that is approaching may very well dwarf the economic upheaval of the last decade, and they may in fact find that an unceasing war may produce people that aren't afraid of them or their lackeys. Two symptoms of this are the Tea Party and the Occupy movement. While both are clumsy and more than a little silly, they both have a few things in common that are interesting enough to examine.

First, both movements are composed of a large percentage of veterans...The Occupy Movement having more recent veterans. Both know something is wrong, but not precisely what that might be. Both are manipulated by outside interests, the Tea Party directly, and the Occupy movement by propaganda in the popular press (as the scary "alternative" to toeing the line).

Second, neither group has any cohesive leadership. The Tea Party's chapters can't get along with each other, and the Occupy movement is run in circles by would be demagogue hipsters arranging "general assemblies". This can be a strength (no "ring leaders" to arrest or discredit) or a weakness (fizzling out due to lack of direction).

Last, both are rendered mostly harmless by the media. The Tea Party is a useful tool, but was quickly neutered in case it got out of hand (take a look at media photos of the Tea Party, and whom they focus on as examples), and the Occupy movement is ignored by the media unless something scandalous happens, in which case they are portrayed as Huns.

What's going on here is this: The current power structure believes that by stunting or co-opting these movements, it can render harmless the discontent that is currently felt across the United States. This may work in the short term, but while the movements may be reduced to laughing stocks, the discontent is still there, though it may lack immediate focus. They are driving the symptoms under the surface, while the cause remains unresolved.

The big problem with movements is subsumation as well as ambiguity of language.

I've been thinking for quite a while that sensible people rip on Libertarians. Used to be that Libertarians were people who thought that the government was oversized and didn't give a shit about what you do in your spare time. Something that I could get partially on board with, at least for social acceptance issues. A real Libertarian, for example, would look at the gay marriage issue with an either or solution. Either you let a dude marry another dude, or everyone gets civil unions for bureaucratic purposes and your church can call it whatever it wants.

But Libertarian doesn't mean that anymore. Libertarian means fringe GOP member that doesn't like to call itself a Republican. Because Republican is as dirty a word as Librul. But hey. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck....

With Occupy, at least, they seem to have resisted the Democratic Party's attempts to do the same. And I have to admit, I find their model of anarchism intersting- the whole what's it called. Lateral democracy or whatever instead of hierarchical. Problem is that Athens didn't work not because they had inequality and slaves (as some point out that you can't REALLY have democracy and slavery. It's true as a point, but democracy never existed so it's moot). Athens didn't work for the same reason that General Assemblies don't. I left a GA with the thought: This is taking too long. I'm getting on the train, getting booze and possibly making an ass of myself on PD.

Why? Well that model is prone to inefficiency. I don't know if he was a plant or a pedant, but there was one asshole who just had to be an attention whore. I'm not a violent person by nature but there were some horrible things happening to this spag in my imagination.

And here's the thing. Here's where my own personal horror comes in.

Even before Occupy happened, I told Villager's roommate "I don't believe in democracy. Democracy never existed and if it did, it is dead. People are too fucking stupid for democracy to work." but that leads you into that loop- Democracy doesn't work, but it's the best system we have this isn't a democracy anyway its a representative republic oh doesn't it suck that only the rich people get to run the show in a representative republic with the illusion of a democracy but on the other hand the fact that you have to be a rich asshole to run for office and be a pawn to evil corporations that only see me covered in green pieces of paper means that the crazy Nazis won't run around lynching people I like because they happen to have more melanin in their skin or happen to prefer getting it on with their own gender and.... and..... annd................ and.................... then you realize we're all fucked anyway. No matter what we do, something is fucking us.

thanks, Dok.Our society is certainly a lean Machine.robustness swapped out for Efficiency, and an envelope pushed because the stockholders demand it...the jiggly valve is rattling loud enough to wake the dead, and we seem to be at that awkward point where a growing percentage of the population is concerned by the racket it's making, but don't want to be a 'tinfoil crazy' about it even though they are realizing that they are in good and growing company that similarly doesn't want to be labeled as kooks.

i'm sure people have felt they live in exception times throughout history, but it certainly feels like a cascade is coming...

could you clarify the comment about Veterans? are you simply saying that they know something is wrong due to their exposure to the War, or is there more to it?

could you clarify the comment about Veterans? are you simply saying that they know something is wrong due to their exposure to the War, or is there more to it?

Well, there's a lot of them, and that's not a shock. Depending on the service you were in, and the MOS they had, they were trained the entire time they were in, to react. Doing something is better than nothing. Acting on incomplete information is part of the job (or at least it was while I was in). So yeah, it's not hard to see that SOMETHING is terribly wrong with our country, and so they're out there with the rest of Occupy or whatever, raising hell about the fact that everything has gone sideways, and especially about the fact that nobody in charge seems to notice or care.

Sure. Banks keep robbing us until people finally shift their fat arses off the couch and string up a few of the bastards on some light poles. Satisfying, but the economy will be proper fucked by then.

i agree that the economy being fucked is baked in the cake, but do you think that the little people will actually resort to physical violence against the banking class? how do you see that playing out?

Sure. Banks keep robbing us until people finally shift their fat arses off the couch and string up a few of the bastards on some light poles. Satisfying, but the economy will be proper fucked by then.

i agree that the economy being fucked is baked in the cake, but do you think that the little people will actually resort to physical violence against the banking class? how do you see that playing out?

My bet? One "Occupy" or some such protest going south, hard. Probably set off by some idiot bank exec thinking that he can make things BETTER by just stepping outside for a minute and TALKING SENSE.

"My father says that almost the whole world is asleep. Everybody you know, everybody you see, everybody you talk to. He says that only a few people are awake, and they live in a state of constant, total amazement."

Sure. Banks keep robbing us until people finally shift their fat arses off the couch and string up a few of the bastards on some light poles. Satisfying, but the economy will be proper fucked by then.

i agree that the economy being fucked is baked in the cake, but do you think that the little people will actually resort to physical violence against the banking class? how do you see that playing out?

It's happened before. What you have here is the first, more civilized attempts to holler grievances. The establishment responded with violence. I see a few more "Eileen" incidents happening, and then maybe some cops get torched with molotovs, and then things go downhill from there.

It's going to take another crash, at the very least. An actual crash, not just the dress rehearshal that we had in 2008.

Look at the UK phone-hacking scandal as the standard for investigation into corrupt practices among politically connected networks. Yes, something came of it, but it took over five years to get from "hey, News International uses ex-policemen with dodgy backgrounds to hack phones" to "Rebekah Brooks is arrested".

And that's a relatively uncomplicated matter, by comparison to international finance.

Furthermore, for criminal proceedings to go ahead, in the US at least, another crash is necessary, since the SEC is deleting their files on any case over a year or two old - such as, well, pretty much everything that happened in the lead up to the final months of 2008.

It's going to take another crash, at the very least. An actual crash, not just the dress rehearshal that we had in 2008.

Look at the UK phone-hacking scandal as the standard for investigation into corrupt practices among politically connected networks. Yes, something came of it, but it took over five years to get from "hey, News International uses ex-policemen with dodgy backgrounds to hack phones" to "Rebekah Brooks is arrested".

And that's a relatively uncomplicated matter, by comparison to international finance.

Furthermore, for criminal proceedings to go ahead, in the US at least, another crash is necessary, since the SEC is deleting their files on any case over a year or two old - such as, well, pretty much everything that happened in the lead up to the final months of 2008.

Won't help them. Any more middle aged people land on their arses, and there's going to be hell to pay.

i'm sure people have felt they live in exception times throughout history, but it certainly feels like a cascade is coming...

But everyone has lived in an exceptional time, I think. People like to think that there's some kind of default state of peace and quiet in history, but it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that we never really get a break. The flow of events just keeps running on whether we see fit to keep up or not. I tell people shit's gonna hit the fan, and they laugh it off. They say I'm placing too much significance on myself, and on the period of time in which I find myself... but every period of time is significant. There's always a war, or a recession, or a cataclysm of some kind going on. Time is a continuous process. Time will not see fit to give us a break. The Finals are drawing near, as they always are. The Finals of our age.

i'm sure people have felt they live in exception times throughout history, but it certainly feels like a cascade is coming...

But everyone has lived in an exceptional time, I think. People like to think that there's some kind of default state of peace and quiet in history, but it's becoming clearer and clearer to me that we never really get a break. The flow of events just keeps running on whether we see fit to keep up or not. I tell people shit's gonna hit the fan, and they laugh it off. They say I'm placing too much significance on myself, and on the period of time in which I find myself... but every period of time is significant. There's always a war, or a recession, or a cataclysm of some kind going on. Time is a continuous process. Time will not see fit to give us a break. The Finals are drawing near, as they always are. The Finals of our age.

This is completely true.

Logged

“I’m guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk,” Charles Wick said. “It was very complicated.”